


Final Hour

by Linorien



Series: 007 Fest 2020 [16]
Category: James Bond (Craig movies), James Bond - All Media Types
Genre: Gen, Q when he was R, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-07-17
Packaged: 2021-03-04 21:34:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25323229
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linorien/pseuds/Linorien
Summary: One Hour. One hour to figure out what is going on. One hour to stop it. One hour on repeat.
Series: 007 Fest 2020 [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1810804
Comments: 5
Kudos: 21
Collections: 007 Fest Fancreations





	Final Hour

**Author's Note:**

> AU table: groundhog day

**Loop 1**

It was late morning when R waved his ID card in front of the main Q Branch doors. He’d been helping with a long mission that only wrapped up late last night so was told specifically not to come in before noon.

It was ten. But it was later than he usually came in and that’s what counted. Also he’d run out of his good tea at home and he needed his back up stash here. The light turned green and he dropped his bag at his desk before making a beeline to the kitchen. 

“You just can’t take a day off, can you?” Shivani teased. 

“I did sleep in,” he protested. “And I’ll take it easy this morning.”

She laughed as she refilled her own mug. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

R rolled his eyes and went to check his email. 

Some boring paperwork that needed to be filled after the mission, a notice about the upcoming design competition, and a blueprint from Jeremy he was meant to look over before Friday. Well, that was a good low brain effort thing to start with. At half past the hour, he was interrupted again.

“R, you’re meant to be at home resting.” Now Q had come over to his desk. The old man had a cheeky smile like he fully expected to see R in here no matter what he had said yesterday. 

“I am taking it easy, Boothroyd. I’m just looking over blueprints.”

“Oh well in that case, carry on.” Q made to move off but a beep from R’s computer stopped him in his track. “That doesn’t sound like a good noise.”

Indeed it wasn’t. “Someone’s made it past our firewall.” Q went back to his station and they tried to hunt down the invader. 

Whoever it was was slippery and R only just found their trail after twenty five minutes. Then he had to figure out what they had done. Someone had refilled his tea and he took a fortifying sip. 

Boom!

The building shook. A further series of booms were set off and the last one sent his ear drums ringing before he blacked out amid the rubble. 

**Loop 2**

For a moment the world was black. Then he was standing in front of the main Q Branch doors, ready to scan in. R shook his head to clear it. What a weird waking dream. Perhaps he should’ve rolled over and gone back to sleep. 

The light turned green and he dropped his bag at his desk before making a beeline to the kitchen. 

“You just can’t take a day off, can you?” Shivani teased. 

“I did sleep in,” he protested. “And I’ll take it easy this morning.”

She laughed as she refilled her own mug. “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

R rolled his eyes and went to check his email. 

Some boring paperwork that needed to be filled after the mission, a notice about the upcoming design competition, and a blueprint from Jeremy he was meant to look over before Friday. Well, that was a good low brain effort thing to start with. At half past the hour, he was interrupted again.

“R, you’re meant to be at home resting.” Now Q had come over to his desk. The old man had a cheeky smile like he fully expected to see R in here no matter what he had said yesterday. 

“I am taking it easy, Boothroyd. I’m just looking over blueprints.”

“Oh well in that case, carry on.” Q made to move off but a beep from R’s computer stopped him in his track. “That doesn’t sound like a good noise.”

Indeed it wasn’t. And now R was a little spooked. “Someone’s made it past our firewall.” Q went back to his station and they tried to hunt down the invader. 

Following a peculiar hunch, R was able to identify the hacker in only ten minutes. Allowing himself a brief moment of victory, he cracked his neck and saw Devon bringing over the pot of tea. “Ta.”

“You looked like you needed it.”

“I do.” Then he dove back into the fray, trying to get ahead of the hacker and stop them. 

Boom!

His heart raced as the first explosion went off. He cut the power to other sections of the building, hoping to stop the chain of explosions, but it didn’t work. The Q Branch explosion went off, his ears rang, and he blacked out. 

**Loop 3.**

For a moment the world was black. Then he was standing in front of the main Q Branch doors, ready to scan in.

This time he knew it was no dream. He looked at his phone. February 2nd, 10am. The light turned green. He had one hour to prevent the destruction of Q Branch and his own death. 

R went straight to his desk and dove into the firewalls, identifying and shoring up the weak spot where the hacker had gotten in. 

“R, you’re meant to be at home resting.” Q came over to his desk. The old man had a cheeky smile like he fully expected to see R in here no matter what he had said yesterday. 

“I am taking it easy, Boothroyd. I’m just patching up a weak spot I noticed last week.”

“No one else can do it?”

“There’s a reason you made me R, sir.” And no one else knew how urgent it was. 

“True enough, carry on.”

Ten-thirty passed without an alarm and he allowed himself to feel a bit victorious. He finished securing the system and went to grab a fresh cup of tea. From the kitchen, he heard it. 

Boom!

Frantic he ran back to his desk. There had been no alarm tripped, how had the explosion happened? While the others in his branch were frantically trying to figure out what had exploded. 

He only just saw that it was M’s office before Q Branch was destroyed.

**Loops 4-10.**

R used various excuses to get into M’s office to look for a planted explosive. But he was never able to find it in time. 

**Loops 11-30.**

He tried looking for the one in Q Branch, hoping to save those he worked with from death. Knowing that the hour kept resetting, he didn’t feel bad about pissing off people. They would thank him later when he saved them. 

He found the bombs, but it only took one look to know he needed more than an hour to dismantle them. 

**Loop 31.**

He took a break for a loop to try to think. He enjoyed his tea in the break room rather than at his computer. He’d been going for over thirty hours without a break and while his body seemed to reset, he didn’t feel hungry or have to pee, his mind needed a break. 

Zoe found him in there. “You look like you’ve got something on your mind.”

R liked Zoe. She was the head of the cover division. The people who made the passports, the websites, the facebook accounts, anything and everything that was needed to sell a cover story. He had worked with her frequently on planning missions and he loved how detail-oriented she was. Especially because he had a tendency to think big picture. 

“Don’t I always?”

She sat next to him. “Spill.”

“Hypothetically,” he began, then paused to take another drink. “Hypothetically there’s a bomb in Q Branch and you have an hour to disarm it, how would you save everyone?”

Zoe blinked. “Couldn’t be a straightforward problem, could it?” she muttered. 

“Wouldn’t be here if it was.”

She thought for a while longer. “Do you know where the bomb is?”

“Yes, but it would take longer than an hour to diffuse.”

“Could you physically remove the bomb?”

R shook his head. “Attached to the building. Also there’s more than one.”

“Trigger mechanism?”

“Far as I can tell, electronic signal.”

“Do you know who sent it?”

“Again no. But I think a timer has already been set. The hacker can be kept out of the system and it still goes off.”

“Are you sure you kept them out of the system? Or did they get in a way you didn’t expect?”

**Loops 32 - 50.**

R spent these loops cornering the hacker in different entry points and testing if they actually made it in undetected or if it truly was a timer. 

It was a timer. 

**Loop 51.**

R discovered that he could cheat the loop. A file could be saved and backdated before the loop began, allowing him to build on his progress every loop.

**Loop 96.**

He had a foolproof code that stopped all of the explosions. He rushed to his desk and ran the code, watching it closely. 

Q came over to his desk. “R, you’re meant to be at home resting.” The old man had a cheeky smile like he fully expected to see R in here no matter what he had said yesterday. 

“I got an alert from home. Something is wrong. I think I may have stopped it though.”

Q set down his mug and moved around the desk to also look at R’s screen. “What is it?”

“It’s complicated. Keep your fingers crossed that this worked. If so, I’ll fill you in within the hour.”

“Alright. Carry on.” Q returned to the front of the room. 

The clock marked the half hour and it was quiet. M’s office had not exploded. But he wasn’t prepared to celebrate just yet. 

He leant back in his chair and nodded his thanks to Devon across the room for the tea. It had cooled, but it wasn’t undrinkable yet. 

Jeremy walked over to his desk. “Hey, R. Did you get those blueprints I emailed you?”

“Yes, I saw them, but something came up. I’ll have feedback by Friday though.” 

“Thanks so much, I’m just a bit nervous and all about my design and you always have such good feedback.”

R waited and watched his different alert systems attentively. At one minute till the hour, still no explosions. He let out a sigh of relief. Every other time MI6 had exploded before now. He had kept out the hacker, stopped the explosions, and saved the day. 

As the clock ticked to eleven, everything faded to black. 

**Loop 97.**

For a moment the world was black. Then he was standing in front of the main Q Branch doors, ready to scan in.

It didn’t work. Or rather, stopping the explosions was successful, but that did not break him out of the loop. He scanned in and walked to his desk. He didn’t get tea. He didn’t even check his email. He just stared at the black screen and wondered where he went wrong. 

He must’ve been a morose sight because Q walked over and asked, “Do you want to have a chat in my office?”

R followed him into the Quartermaster’s office and sat on the chair next to the desk. 

“What did you fail?”

He looked up. 

Q said, “I know you well and you don’t mope like this unless you think you failed. No reports of the mission have been submitted yet, but from what I know, it was a success. So what is it?”

He laid out the dilemma like he’d laid it out to Zoe. He listed all the things he had tried and the outcomes of each. 

“What is success?” Q asked at the end of his tale. 

R was taken aback. “Like, philosophically?”

“No. Define the success outcome of the scenario.”

“I stop the explosions and save MI6.”

“Wrong.”

“What?” 

“Success is making it out of the time loop.”

Oh. Well yes. “But I die at the end of each loop.”

Q raised an eyebrow. It was the look he gave agents when they were being particularly dense. He didn’t like being on the other end of it. “Do you?”

He realised the last loop proved that false. The boms had not gone off, yet he still blacked out and started the hour over again. 

“If the loop exists for you to change something, maybe the explosion isn’t what you need to change.”

“I’m meant to let the bombs go off and destroy MI6 and everyone in it?”

“Are you sure that’s what happens?”

“No. I guess not. But they are massive explosions. There’s no way people don’t die.”

“We’re spies, R. We face death every day. The agents more directly than us, but we have volatile experiments in the basement. You know the ones. Any one of those could go horribly wrong and destroy the branch. I wish I didn’t have to give you this advice, but you have to start thinking like a branch head.” Q reached across the desk and put a hand on R’s shoulder. “Numbers first, people later.”

Boom!

Q gave him a significant look. “Now get out.”

R ran from the office with Q swiftly following. “Everyone out!” He shouted. He ran to the intercom system and ordered a secure lockdown and evacuation. Then he ran to the shooting range where it was difficult to hear the intercoms and slammed the lights off to make sure everyone paid attention. Confident that everyone knew, he logged into his workstation to execute the secure lockdown of the system. It took time, but the data were more important than he was. He was midway through when Q shouted at him. 

“What are you still doing here?”

“It’s fine, everyone is evacuating. I need to make sure all the systems are secure.” He’d made sure the maximum number of people were evacuated. It wouldn’t matter if he was killed. The system was more important than he was. 

“I can do that R, you leave.”

“No, I run faster than you, you go.”

“R, you’ve missed the point.”

The building shook. A further series of booms were set off and the last one sent his ear drums ringing before he blacked out amid the rubble.

**Loop 98.**

R came to in front of the scanner. He knew what he needed to do. He’d known before, but he didn’t want to admit it. He had to prepare for this loop, then the next one would be the last. 

Taking advantage of the computer loophole, he wrote a script to send a mass email earlier in the morning. It would happen in between loops. He also put a note on Q’s computer for him to read. It was an apology and a thank you. 

Then he closed his station and sat in the breakroom with his tea while the building exploded around him. 

**Loop 99.**

R turned away from the scanner. He pulled up the app on his phone to erase video footage as he walked out of the building and down onto the Thames foreshore. There would be no record of him scanning into the building. 

His phone showed that the email had been sent. Hopefully most of the branch had been evacuated. He saw M’s car coming back across the bridge and smiled as she was stopped. She would be safe. 

Boom!

He didn’t turn around when the first explosion was set off. He watched the water and listened to the sirens while he waited for the next set. 

It was a low rumble. His heart clenched, knowing without needing to see, that there were still many deaths. 

Big Ben chimed out eleven. 

His phone buzzed with a call. It was Tanner. “I know you were given leave to come in late,” he said without preamble. “But we need you.”

“I’m already on my way.”

“Thank you. Q.”

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to go with the idea that the universe needs Q to start thinking like a Quartermaster before he takes over. Like he has to learn that he'll need to make hard choices and realise he can't save everyone.


End file.
